Can Of Corn

Terrific Tandems

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Call it the "one-two punch" or the "tandem aces" or the "pitching Cerberus sans one head" or whatever you like. As the post-season looms, it's perhaps instructive to ponder which teams have the best business end of the rotation. If nothing else, this will allow you to do something other than pace and pare your nails while waiting for the TV show of the millennium.

To acquaint you with the abbreviations above, I'll point that BABIP is opponents' batting average on balls in play, IP is innings pitched, K/BB is strikeout-to-walk ratio, HR/9 is home runs allowed per nine innings and Adj R/G is park-adjusted runs per game. All numbers provided are aggregate totals and averages for the top two starters.

In order to wrest some quick-and-dirty rankings out of this, let's award points to each of these top seven tandems for how they fare in each category. Seven points for leading a column, one point for finishing last, etc. I'll exclude the BABIP category since pitchers have limited control over what becomes of balls in play and since it's already amply reflected in the Adj R/G column.

These rankings run the same as VORP, except that the A's and Brewers tandems have swapped places. In a qualitative sense, I'd agree with how these grade out. Johan Santana has been unassailably the best pitcher in baseball this season (who says the Rule 5 Draft is pointless), but Radke himself boasts an astounding 6.9 K/BB ratio and could end the season with more double plays induced than unintentional walks, an incredible stat.

If I'd told you at the beginning of the season that the Cubs' three, four and five starters all would've ranked in the top 35 in VORP, that GM Jim Hendry would acquire Nomar Garciaparra at the deadline for little cost, that Moises Alou, Aramis Ramirez, Sammy Sosa and Derrek Lee would've combined for 120 homers by Sept. 10 and that Michael Barrett would slug almost .500 in full-time duty, you probably wouldn't have believed me. If I'd told you all that and then said the Cubs would be locked out of a playoff spot with three weeks to go, it would certainly strain credulity. What an odd team.

Tim Hudson is a strange one this season. He's striking out less than 5.0 batters per nine (an inadequate figure for a frontline starter). Given his solid R/G of 3.77, you'd probably assume that his BABIP is inordinately low. However, at .304 it's actually a few ticks above league average. Hudson's keeping runs off the board in spite of those numbers by giving up homers at a rate that's more in line with a grammar-school cabbage ball game. In 152.2 innings this season, he's yielded just four homers. In fact, Hudson's homer rate relative to the league homer rate is the second best mark since 1950 (bested only by Maddux in 1994).